Techniques To Stay Organized Before And After College

Techniques To Stay Organized Before And After College

As many students start to graduate from college, they enter a totally new phase in their lives.

Not only they will have to adapt working full-time, they will also have to adapt to their new environments outside of work.

Below is some advice for the new graduates that will make this transition smoother while leaving the school.

Set Goals For Yourself

Until you finish college, everything in your life is well defined.

First, you get good grades in high school so you can get into a college and then, you choose your college courses which are required by your curriculum or recommended by your advisor.

Finally, you try to get good grades again so that you can have a high GPA. Unfortunately, life itself is not well defined like academics.

There are ups and downs of it. Therefore, it is up to you to define your life.

Start defining your life by setting goals to yourself. What do you want to do in your career?

Do you want to go work in the corporate world or do you want to start your own business? Or do you want to stay in academia?

First, find the answers to these questions and then, make a list of goals.

Change Your Habits

When you are attending college, you can easily fit your classes into a 3-day schedule and leave two days off or you can choose all the afternoon classes in order to stay up all night and sleep until noon.

However, when you have a full-time job, you are expected to wake up early and come to work in the morning.

Also, you need to come to work every day so you can’t have any more 3-day schedules. In order to have a smooth transition, start sleeping early so you can wake up early and be energetic.

Moreover, eat your lunches at the same time every day around noon so your body can adapt to this new schedule.

Learn to make budgets.

If you have student loans, once you are out of college and land a job, you will start paying them off.

Thus, you need to manage your budget wisely. It is important to pay off your debt on time so that you can have a good credit score.

In the future, this score will be very important if you want to buy a new car, a house or even apply to a new credit card.

Once you are blacklisted by credit score companies, it is very hard to get out of that list.

Focus And Be Productive

Technology has helped us do so much more, so much faster. But many experts argue that work-related systems and tools haven’t necessarily made us more productive.

How many times does your phone, tablet or computer chime to indicate email or a Facebook notification?

The reality is that while technology has the ability to improve productivity, too many people allow it to distract.

Ultimately, the key to getting more done in less time requires focus. A cluttered, overly busy mind is like a cluttered, messy home; it takes too long to find stuff and get things done.

Tips To Improving Focus In School

Endeavor To Stop Switch-tasking

You find a lot of articles on how to multitask, but in fact, it’s nearly impossible to multitask work tasks.

You can walk and chew gum at the same time, but neither of those requires focus. When you’re involved in tasks that require focus, multitasking is impossible.

So when you think you’re multitasking, you’re actually switch-tasking, alternating between multiple tasks.

While that can result in getting things done, the time it takes to leave one task, refocus, do another task, leave that task to refocus on the first task again, wastes time over giving 100% to one task until completion and then moving to give total focus to the next task.

Schedule Tasks In Blocks Of Time

If you have several things you need to get done, instead of going back and forth, schedule each a chunk of time where you can focus on one and when the time is up changed to the other.

If you’re concerned about getting so involved that you lose time and don’t get to the next tasks, set a timer.

Practice Positive Procrastination

Positive procrastination is the act of procrastinating the less needed task for the most needed. This is because not all tasks carry the same weight in importance.

Instead, prioritize your tasks so that you’re achieving the things that create the most results. You can even listen to music if it doesn’t distract you.

Headphones can eliminate all ambient noise, such as trucks, copiers and other distractions that occur in your office. Let your colleagues know that they shouldn’t interrupt when the headphones are on unless it’s an emergency.